First thing that always pops into my head regarding our president is
that all of the people who are setting up this barrier for him … they
just conveniently forget that Barack had a mama, and she was white —
very white American, Kansas, middle of America…There was no argument
about who he is or what he is. America’s first black president hasn’t
arisen yet. He’s not America’s first black president — he’s America’s
first mixed-race president.

Yesterday, Alsumaria reported that
Nouri has ordered raids and arrests in Diyala Province. Baquba is the
capital and it borders Iran in the north. It is predominately Sunni
with a signficiant number of Shi'ites Kurds and Turkmen. "Home to every
major sect and ethnicity of Iraq," the Institute for the Study of War has noted. The organization also noted:

Shia
and Kurdish power blocs saw the organization of the Sunnis into
legitimized security forces in Diyala as a threat to their strategic
interests within a critical province. In response to the IIPs growing
power, Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki created the Diyala Support Council
(DSC) in mid-2007 in an attempt to influence Diyala from
Baghdad. Further, Maliki employed the ISF to reduce the strength of
Sunni power bloc in Diyala by arresting hundreds of Sunni fighters and
ejecting Popular Committee leaders from their offices. Lastly, in
February of 2008, Prime Minister Maliki won the approval of the
Government of Iraq to form Tribal Support Councils (TSC) throughout
Iraq. The Diyala TSCs allowed Maliki to check growing Sunni influence
within the province and play one Sunni group off another, effectively
preventing the Sunnis from creating a single, consolidated political
bloc.

With at least 13
arrested in Diyala Wednesday and security sources telling Alsumaria that
20 more have been arrested in Diyala already this month, chances are
the arrests will be seen as part of Nouri al-Maliki's continued attack
on Iraq's Sunni population. Today, Bryar Mohammed (AK News) reports
Iraqiya's Suhad al-Hayali is stating that police are stating, "You are
Sunnis and are behind the terrorist attacks. The Security forces coming
from Baghdad to Baquba attack people in violation of the human rights
and speak sectarian slogans and remarks."

In addition, Iraq's Journalists Freedom Observatory noted
yesterday that when journalists attempted to cover Minister of
Electricity Abdul Karim Aftan's appearance at the opening of a new power
plant in Baghdad July 2nd (Monday) they witnessed the minister's
security guards begin beating people -- including journalists -- to
clear a route for the minister's departure.

But
just as Iraqi politics heats up, the United States is rapidly losing
its ability to decipher events in the country. "Half of our situational
awareness is gone," an unnamed U.S. official told the Wall Street Journal in June. "More than half," a serving U.S. military officer told me when I asked about the accuracy of that statement.

To
Iraq experts, these statements ring true: At the height of the "surge,"
the United States collected fine-grain data from the 166,000 U.S.
troops and 700 CIA personnel in Iraq, as well as a network of 31
Provincial Reconstruction Teams. Now, U.S. embassy staff enjoy very
limited freedom of movement -- hemmed in by a suspicious government in
Baghdad and a still-dangerous security situation. According to the Journal,
the CIA station in Iraq may be reduced to 40 percent of its peak levels
because the Iraqi government is extremely sensitive about its
intelligence work with the Iraqi security forces.

The
concerns come at a time when the US government continues to spend
massive amounts of taxpayer money in Iraq despite the decreased US
oversight. Joshua Altman (The Hill -- link has text and video) reports US House Rep Jason Chaffetz was on CNN's Situation Room with Wolf Blitzter
Tuesday and declared, "The degree in which our assets are being treated
in very troublesome. There's some 50 billion dollars worth of projects
that the American taxpayers have footed ... yet when we try to go
through checkpoints and try to travel through the country and do other
types of things we're having a very difficult time."

Chair Jason Chaffetz: The State Dept has greatly expanded its footprint in Iraq. There are approximately 2,000 direct-hire personnel and 14,000 support contractors -- roughly a seven-to-one ratio. This includes 7,000 private security contractors to guard our facilities and move personnel throughout Iraq. Leading up to the withdrawal, the
State Dept's mission seemed clear. Ambassador Patrick Kennedy
testified that the diplomatic mission was "designed to maximize
influence in key locations." And later said, "State will continue the police development programs moving beyond basic policing skills to provide police forces with the capabilities to uphold the rule of law. The Office of Security Cooperation will help close gaps in Iraq's security forces capabilities through security assistance and cooperation." This is an unprecedented mission for the State Dept. Nonetheless, our diplomatic corps has functioned without the protections of a typical host nation. It's also carried on without troop support that many believed it would have. As a result, the Embassy spends roughly 93% of its budget on security alone. Without a doubt, this is an enormously complex and difficult mission. Six months into the transition, the Congress must assess whether the administration is accomplishing its mission? While the State Dept has made progress, it appears to be facing difficult challenges in a number of areas. The Oversight Committee has offered some
criticism based on their testimony today. Including the Government
Accountability Office noting that the State and Defense Dept's security
capabilities are not finalized. The Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction states that, "Thousands of projects completed by the United States and transferred to the government of Iraq will not be sustained and thus will fail to meet their intended purposes." The Defense Dept's Inspector General's Office explains that the lack of Status of Forces Agreement has impacted land use agreements, force protection, passport visa requirements, air and
ground movement and our foreign military sales program. And the US AID
Inspector General's office testifies, "According to US AID mission, the
security situation has hampered its ability to monitor programs. Mission personnel are only occassionally able to travel to the field for site visits." Embassy personnel have also told Committee staff that the United States government has difficulty registering its vehicles with the Iraqi government and Iraqis have stood up checkpoints along supply lines. According to one embassy official, the team must dispatch a liason to "have tea and figure out how we're going to get our trucks through." These are just some of the challenges the State Dept is facing in Iraq today. Perhaps as a result of these conditions, Mission Iraq appears to be evolving. In an effort to be more efficient, the State Dept is evaluating its footprint, reducing personnel and identifying possible reductions. This rapid change in
strategy, however, raises a number of questions. Are we on the right
track? Are we redefining the mission? What should we expect in the
coming months? And, in hindsight, was this a well managed withdrawal?

The
Subcommittee heard about it being impossible for Americans to check
on the various costly projects the US taxpayers continue paying for (so
there is no direct US supervision) and that there was a failure to get
lease agreements so that most of the facilities could be lost. (Only 5
of 14 have land lease agreements, as the US Government Accountability
Office's Michael Courts testified.)) This matters because? It matters
because of the money the US government is spending -- taxpayer money --
in Iraq. US House Rep Blake Farenthold conveyed his displeasure to the
State Dept's Patrick Kennedy over the fact that the Police College Annex
in Baghdad was a US facility that cost US taxpayers "more than $100
million in improvements to the site" only to "be turned over to Iraq for
free" as a result of the US not securing a land lease. And don't
forget that last week, Walter Pincus (Washington Post via Stars and Stripes) reported,
"The State Department is planning to spend as much as $115 million to
upgrade the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad, already its biggest and
most expensive in the world, according to pre-solicitation notices
published this month. Remember, it has been 3 1/2 years since American
diplomats moved into the 104-acre, $700 million facility and only four
months after State Department officials in February talked about trying
to cut back the U.S. presence there."

US officials had no trouble visiting the KRG today. All Iraqi News reports
they met with KRG President Massoud Barzani and discussed the ongoing
political crisis as well as the US relationship with the KRG. The
article notes that Barzani also attended the July 4th celebration held
by the US Consulate in Erbil and spoke there with remarks which included
a reminder to the "US leadership" of the obligations they have to the
Kurds as a result of promises and he noted the Kurds aren't a threat to
unity, that the Kurds support unity and freedom and that they do not and
will not support a dictatorship. The article gets the titles wrong of
the two US officials. One is Alex Laskaris is the Counsul General for
the Erbil consulate and he is expected to leave shortly (US President
Barack Obama has nominated Laskaris to be the US Ambassador to
Guinea). The other official is Robert Stephen Beecroft who is the
Charge d'affaires and running the US mission in Iraq since the US
Ambassador James Jeffrey stepped down from his post last month. If you click here (KRG official government website), you can see a photo of President Massoud Barzani receiving the US officials.
At a time when the US government has less and less eyes in Iraq, it's
worth nothing that among the 'missing' eyes is a US Ambassador to Iraq.
Laura Rozen scooped everyone (by weeks) with the news that Brett McGurk
would be Barack Obama's third nominee for the post. Unlike the other
two (Jeffrey and, before him, Chris Hill), McGurk did not make it
through the confirmation process. Last week at Al-Monitor, Laura Rozen shared:

In the wake of Obama's nominee for Iraq ambassador withdrawing
his name from consideration last week after an unusually bruising
ordeal, it's a fair bet the Obama administration is inclined to go with a
safe, more easily confirm-able pick for its next nominee for the post.

Washington
Iraq experts say they expect the new nominee to be announced in the
next couple weeks, and have offered a somewhat lengthy list of diplomats
they have heard are in the mix for the post overseeing the largest US
embassy in the world.

She goes on to
note the names she's hearing for the post including Robert Stephen
Beecroft, Stuart Jones (US Ambassador to Jordan) and Robert Ford (former
US Ambassador to Syria). As with Barack's previous three nominees for
US Ambassador to Iraq -- and all the ones under Bush -- they're all
male.